The Yorkshire Henges and their Environs Air Photo Mapping project (3908) aims to place the series of Neolithic monuments that are to be found on the Magnesian Limestone in North and West Yorkshire in their contemporary and later landscape contexts. It does this by generating accurate and detailed mapping of levelled and upstanding archaeological features that are visible on existing air photos and other remote sensing data. This project is funded by English Heritage’s Historic Environment Enabling Programme and its work is undertaken by an independent consultant based with the Aerial Survey and Investigation (North) team.
The area of the project
This project covers an area of 588km2 in North Yorkshire. It encompasses the extent of the Southern Magnesian Limestone Belt in that county and extends northwards to Catterick, and eastward to the River Swale across parts of the Vale of Mowbray and the Vale of York. It encircles a similar project, Thornborough Henges and their Environs, which was completed in 2005 and keys into two other earlier projects, the Lower Wharfedale NMP Project and the Vale of York NMP Project.
The methodology of the project
This project is mapping archaeological features that are visible as cropmarks, soilmarks and earthworks on existing vertical and oblique air photographs and lidar-derived images. The sources of the air photographs are as follows:
• National Monuments Record specialist, military oblique and vertical collections
• Unit for Landscape Modelling oblique and vertical air photographs
• North Yorkshire HER oblique air photographs
• Google Earth
The lidar data is delivered to the project as rasterized tiles and originates from the Environment Agency.
The traditional vertical and oblique air photos are rectified and georeferenced using a computer program. These are collated with the other georeferenced material, the lidar-derived images and the Google Earth images into a GIS environment and then the archaeological features are digitised to create individual vector objects. All objects are tagged with information that will assist in the management and interrogation of the archaeological data, this includes the NMR monument record number, period, type and photo sources.
Accessing the data
When the project is completed in March 2012 the data will be disseminated through the NMR and made available to North Yorkshire’s HER. Until the project is completed enquiries may be directed to Alison Deegan in the first instance. The data is the copyright of English Heritage.
The images used on this page are copyright English Heritage unless specified otherwise. For further details of any photographs or other images and for copies of these, or the plans and reports related to the project please contact the English Heritage Archive.
For further information on a project or any other aspect of the work of the Aerial Survey team please contact us via email using the link above.
